


hurry, boy, she’s waiting there for you

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (maybe), (sort of), Canon Compliant, Drama, F/M, Love Confessions, POV Alternating, Rescue, Romance, Season 8 speculation, also i love em dashes as if they were my own children apparently, chuck e CHEESY AF, fan theory fic, jon snow about to NUT UP AND GO FOR IT, like soap operatic levels of drama here, not dany-friendly ever at all so don't @ me cuz i done told you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 03:28:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14179533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: Jon travels to King’s Landing for another armistice of sorts.(title from “africa,” by toto)





	hurry, boy, she’s waiting there for you

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: this fic is based on some s8 spec of which i haven’t entirely worked out the details, so let’s just take this fic as it is, shall we? here be plot holes and we’re all just going to have to accept them
> 
> the basics: sansa is kidnapped on cersei’s order, and jon fucks off to KL to rescue her by any means necessary — because nothing matters more to him than his hot and totally platonic (read: not at all platonic) sister-wife, get rekt haters
> 
> **skateboards off in my tank top and board shorts with a 64oz slurpee and no regrets**

**i. i hear the drums echoing tonight**  
**but she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation**

Sansa is taken in the dead of the night.

Left behind on her goose-feather pillow is a scroll — bound by a scarlet, lion-embossed wax seal — that causes unpleasant memories to churn through Jon’s mind like the rolling clouds of a thunderstorm.

_(Come and see…)_

_The Lady Sansa is once more the esteemed guest of the Queen. Ride to King’s Landing for another armistice, and you shall have her back._

Jon crumples the heavy yellow parchment to a pulp in his fist. He breathes, deep and measured, even as his heart picks up a panicked pace: _in and out, in and out…_

_If you wish for her safety, you will come and bend the knee. Should you want her, come and get her._

_(Come and see…)_

But Sansa’s scent — fresh-fallen snow and blue winter roses — lingers in her empty chambers, and Jon cannot clear his head to _think_.

He had been a fool to misjudge Cersei Lannister — to underestimate her.

But there had been bigger obstacles than a queen with few territories, fewer allies, and a depleted army. Daenerys had dragons, the Dothraki, the Unsullied — and a temper that could light the Seven Kingdoms aflame if she did not get her way. Jon had seen that temper flare when Tyrion Lannister had failed her; he had seen her self-indulgent pride, time and again, when she would not lend her hand unless Jon first bent the knee; he had seen her carelessness, her disloyalty, when the Greyjoys and Martells had been compromised, and she had thought only of her precious throne and how she would claim it now. She asked for everything, but risked nothing.

And Jon would risk it all to get Sansa back.

Jon had pledged himself and his home to Daenerys’ cause, because she could not be trusted without his submission. Sansa had warned him — _you have to be smarter than Father, smarter than Robb_ — and so Jon had played the honourable Northern fool, but he had known better. He had been disillusioned of such honourable notions during his time with the Night’s Watch, and his eyes had been opened upon his resurrection: he must be ruthless with strangers, with interlopers, with the petty feuds between warring monarchs, if he wished to ensure the safety of what — of _who_ — truly mattered.

Sansa had given him purpose, direction; she had reignited the fire that his brothers’ blades had doused — that fire within him that compelled him to protect, to cherish, to fight, to _live_. The Red Woman may have restored his life, but it was Sansa who had restored his broken soul. She had made his heart beat for something more than a second life that he did not want; she had made his heart beat for _her_ , she had made him want this life — and he wanted it with her.

He will not let Cersei or Daenerys stop him. He does not care who wears the Southron crown — he never has, and he will pledge his sword to whomever does not lay a hand upon Sansa Stark. And if they should try, then Jon would sooner run them through with Longclaw than give them half a second chance to hurt her.

He won’t give them _time_ to hurt her.

Jon sweeps from Sansa’s abandoned rooms, and readies himself for the journey to King’s Landing.

“You said that the army of the dead was upon us, that there was no time to waste,” Daenerys snarls when he announces his intent to the haphazardly gathered council. “And now you want to run back to King’s Landing, to _Cersei Lannister_ —”

“Sansa is not a waste of time,” Jon bites back. “She is not wasted effort, or wasted men, and I _will not_ allow her to become a casualty in this war. If I have to bend the knee to Cersei Lannister to get her back, I will.”

A heavy silence hangs — so thick, poignant, that not even Davos or Tyrion makes to disrupt it with reason or charm or other platitudes — before Daenerys shatters it with a reminder that promises to haunt Jon to his grave:

“You pledged yourself to _me_.”

“I pledged myself to Sansa first,” he insists upon his own reminder, of a vow he intends to keep above all else. _I’ll protect you… No matter the odds…_ “To _my family_ first.”

“What about me? I’m your family, too.”

Daenerys’ eyes flash as the words leave her. She had not been pleased with the news of Jon’s true parentage; she had not minced words about _that_ , and now she means to use it to her advantage?

“No.” Jon shakes his head, so vehemently that an ache forms between his brows. “No, not like _that_ — not like Sansa. Ned Stark raised me, he protected my life at the price of his honour. I never knew your brother. He is nothing to me. I didn’t even know you existed until you had me _summoned_ to Dragonstone, where you kept me prisoner —”

_Never your equal, only your prisoner and then your subordinate. Never safe enough to defy your demands if I meant to depart your cursed island with my life._

“You kept me away from my home, from _her_ , and for what?” It’s Jon who demands now — he wants answers, he wants reason, he wants the gods’ divine plan and he wants _justice_ for it.

“So that the North would bend to you, acknowledge you as their rightful queen? They have a queen, Daenerys!” Jon shouts, so that the truth of her position rings loud and clear upon the stone walls of Winterfell. “They’ve chosen her and they want her back. The North _will_ _not bend_ to you, just as I said. They want Sansa and I intend to get her back. Cersei’s taken her because _I_ was too stupid to listen. _I_ was too preoccupied with _your_ dragons and _your_ armies and submitting to _your_ will, your _commands_ , all so I could end the Long Night before it started.”

Silence hangs heavy once more. Jon’s chest is heaving, heart ramming, blood pounding in his ears…

Daenerys’ face is a mask, but it does little to hide the mad fury that bubbles beneath. “So I mean nothing to you, then?”

For a moment, Jon does not speak. If he had not already known, then now would be the time that he would see her for what she truly is: Another Targaryen, another tyrant, another power-hungry force vying for a throne that doesn’t even matter, without any real thought to the people she would force to bend to her rule… _just more of the same_.

 _“Tell me,”_ Daenerys orders — it’s all she knows, to _order_ and rage — as she curls her fingers ‘round his elbow. Her nails bite into his skin, a dragon’s claws in its prey. “Tell me that the blood of the usurper’s dog rings more true to you than the blood of the dragon. Tell me that you’ve chosen this frozen wasteland over what _I_ could give to you when I take the Iron Throne. Tell me that you’d truly betray the vow you made to me.”

_I would sooner betray my vow to you than the one I made to the North… to the Starks… to Sansa._

“Tell me,” Daenerys says again, a threat in every syllable, “what it is I mean to you.”

Jon jerks his arm from her hold. Neither his gaze nor his voice falters when he finally, mercilessly, tells her the truth — the one he’s known all the while:

_“Nothing.”_

 

* * *

**ii. i know that i must do what’s right**  
**i seek to cure what’s deep inside,**  
**frightened of this thing that i’ve become**

Jon stows himself away in his chambers as he makes last-minute preparations. The Northern lords and bannermen had rallied behind his decision to retrieve their beloved Lady of Winterfell; a small retinue would be hot on his heels, should Cersei Lannister refuse to give Sansa up without a bloody battle first.

The queen’s scroll had sworn to do no such thing — Jon need only come bend the knee, and Sansa would be returned to him — but Jon does not trust Cersei at her word any more than he’d trusted Daenerys’. So he had taken the necessary precautions: He would journey to King’s Landing, and his men would be less than half a day behind him.

_Just in case._

He’d left Daenerys fuming, but there’s hardly a part of him that cares. Between the three of them, Tyrion, Varys, and Jorah Mormont should be able to temper her anger long enough for Jon to do what needs to be done.

_Bring Sansa home first. The rest will have to wait ‘til after._

Jon can’t claim to know what will come after — only fire and ice and blood and death, of _that_ he has been certain from the start. Everything else is just a muddled political game that should pale in comparison to the Night King’s approach, and yet…

The Dragon Queen is not a reasonable woman — had been less so as her stay at Winterfell progressed, as she’d watched Jon reunite with the Starks and give them his affections in a way he’d never given to her. She had doubted his commitment to her upon their arrival — as soon as Sansa had leapt into his arms at the castle gates, when Jon had not hesitated to catch her in his hold and keep her there far longer than propriety allowed.

Daenerys had seen what Jon had tried to hide, and she’d hated Sansa on sight.

Of course, that hardly mattered once Jon’s parentage had been revealed. Daenerys hates _him_ now, too, just as much, albeit differently. She had fancied a marriage alliance between them would suit well — the Targaryens had intermarried for centuries, after all — but Jon had protested so vehemently that the North hardly had to raise its voice at all. They had distrusted Jon for bringing a Targaryen and her armies to their front door, and even more so when it became known that he was a Targaryen himself; his refusal of Daenerys somewhat redeemed him in the lords’ eyes.

But Jon wonders if he could ever find redemption, should the North know of the way that his heart beats — aches, sings, _soars_ — for their chosen queen.

He is roused from such thoughts — _hair of fire, eyes of ice, skin white as the bark of the weirwood tree, she smells of their cold winter home, and lights a warmth within his breast that travels through his veins like sweet Arbor gold, honeyed and rich as her laughter as it echoes in his mind_ — when his chamber door creaks open.

Bran lets himself in but does not speak. He rarely does anymore. He’s not the same boy Jon left behind so many years ago, and he dreads what Bran has come to tell him now. The boy only comes ‘round when he has something to say; so far, Jon hasn’t relished a word of it.

It’s no different now, when the words that Jon had fought so hard to keep at bay attack him from his brother’s — _cousin’s_ — mouth, so that Jon has no power to stop them:

“You love her.”

There’s an ache in Jon’s chest.

“Don’t, Bran.”

But the gods do not have mercy on Jon today.

“Sansa… you do love her,” Bran reiterates, in a tone of such finality that Jon could not so much as hope to rebuke the fact, even if he had the strength to do so now. “I see it.”

Jon braces his hands on the back of a nearby chair. _Red hair._ Closes his eyes. _Pale skin._ Tries to breathe. _A deep-sea gaze._ Feels his heart stutter. _Her hand in mine._ Feels it race. _I can’t do this right now. I can’t I can’t I can’t —_

“You’ll find her,” Bran says, as monotonously but assuredly as he says everything else.

Jon doesn’t mean to, but his voice bites with a laced bitterness that he cannot contain when he shoots back, “Do you see that, too? Do you see me riding to King’s Landing to reach her, when she shouldn’t have been taken in the first place? When _I shouldn’t have let her_ be taken?”

He pushes away from the chair so violently that it tumbles to the ground. A leg snaps when it meets the cold stone floor that Jon has begun to pace, like a wild animal that’s been battered and bruised and caged with no escape.

“I promised to protect her.” He wants to rage, to scream, to tear his hair out over the sheer unfairness of it all. “It’s all I’ve done since I’ve come back, _everything_ I’ve done has been for her — to keep her alive, to keep her safe, to keep her home.”

Jon stops, shoulders tense, as the truth settles deep within his bones and leaves him hollow: _Gone, gone, gone…_ “And now she’s gone.”

“So go get her back.”

Arya breezes through the door, silent as a shadow had it not been for her crisp command. Her expression is hard when she looks upon him, masked with a determination that belies the fear that simmers in the pits of all their bellies.

“I know you’re going no matter what I say,” Arya continues with a practiced calm, so unlike the rough-and-tumble sister Jon had last seen when he’d given her a sword. “But I _am_ telling you to go. I want my sister back, Jon. And if Tormund’s got it right, I daresay you want your woman back, too.”

There’s a note of accusation to her voice that makes Jon cringe, but Arya offers him the softest of smiles — one that perhaps he wouldn’t have caught if he’d never known her at all.

“I suppose we’ve all changed since we left Winterfell. We’ve all come back different,” she observes. Her eyes travel from Jon to Bran and back again. “But perhaps Sansa will get the hero she used to dream about, anyway. When she was young, when we all had room to dream of whatever we wanted…”

Arya trails off, lost in thoughts of the past, for only a moment before she snaps out of it. She looks Jon up and down, as if to appraise him, and asks, “Do you think you could be what she wants? Or do I have to kill Cersei Lannister myself?”

“No.” Jon would chuckle, but he sees the steel in her eyes and knows she means what she says. So he ruffles her hair — Arya will always be his little sister, no matter his blood or the darkness that’s crept inside of her in her time away. “I’ve lost too many of you to the Lannisters already. I won’t risk you now, too.”

“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” Bran reminds them. “Arya will stay.”

Neither Jon nor Arya tell him that he’s a Stark, too; Bran only believes himself to be the Three-Eyed Raven now, and their affirmations otherwise are always rebuffed, if not completely ignored.

“I’ll stay,” Arya agrees. She levels Jon with that steady gaze once more, and quirks a brow slightly in challenge. “Besides, I think Jon might make a rather fine knight for our sister all on his own.”

Jon nods. He would say more — an uttered promise to save her, to bring her home, to never let her out of his sight again — but his heart has lodged itself in his throat and he can’t bring himself to speak. And so the words stay tucked away, nestled deep within him, keeping that flame for her alive and well and dancing with his devotion — all for her — and he swears it like he’s never sworn anything else in all his life:

_I’ll bring her home._

He has never broken a promise to Sansa before, and he’ll be damned if he starts now.

 

* * *

 

**iii. the moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation**

Sansa watches the night sky from her window, locked away in the same rooms she’d frequented when she’d been held hostage in the Red Keep for so many years — for what had felt like a lifetime.

_And it feels like another lifetime since I’ve sweated in the Southron heat._

A cold sort of calm had fallen over Sansa since the night of her abduction (how many moons ago? Four or five, perhaps? Fifteen? Thirty? Any number’s as likely as the next). She had not screamed when Euron Greyjoy captured her, she had not struggled against the length of rope ‘round her wrists, nor had she choked muffled cries against the filthy cloth that gagged her. She would not give the man the satisfaction of her fear.

She had survived Joffrey, Petyr, Ramsay… and she had watched them all fall. She hadn’t torn her eyes away from them as they succumbed to their deaths: choking, pleading, scrambling to escape the inevitable — just as she had always fought and begged and prayed, but she had outlived them all.

And she does not intend to die now, either.

The South has not been kind to the Starks; the country has killed far more of them than it’s saved, but Sansa will not be another victim of Cersei Lannister’s machinations. Not again.

She hasn’t a plan — Sansa is no warrior, that much she knows; she cannot fight her way out of King’s Landing with a blade, even if she had one. But…

“Jon will come,” she had told Cersei, when the woman wondered after Sansa’s dry eyes the morning after her arrival. “The North belongs to the Starks, haven’t you heard? We’ve won their loyalty with more than just my birthright now. They raise their banners for us again, for love and duty alike.”

Sansa had then returned to her stitching — a kindness granted by Cersei, who meant to recreate Sansa’s former imprisonment as best she could, as though such unpleasant memories would rattle her unyielding nerves. But Sansa has faced far worse than the cruelties of the south by now. The past does not faze her so terribly, not when so much of the future is at stake.

_I used to think about what I wanted, never about what I had…_

“And the North will come for you, you think?” Cersei had asked, as if the notion amused her.

“I’m sure they’re already on their way.” Unconcerned, Sansa counted her stitches. _A white wolf on a grey field…_ “So if you mean to kill me, you’d best get on with it.”

But of course Cersei had done no such thing; she hadn’t even threatened as much. Sansa Stark remains the Key to the North; she is far too valuable to execute, as Cersei’s hold on the Iron Throne is so tenuous. Keeping Sansa alive may very well ensure the North’s cooperation and allegiance, while killing her would only incite another war.

Besides — while Cersei may continue to scoff at Daenerys Targaryen’s claim to the Seven Kingdoms — the news of Jon Snow’s parentage had found its way south, and Cersei is not fool enough to spill the blood of a Stark woman when a Targaryen man would so readily draw his sword for her.

After all, Cersei had been there, so many years ago, when Rhaegar Targaryen crowned Lyanna Stark his Queen of Love and Beauty. She had known blind devotion when she saw it then, and she knows that Targaryen blood is too strong to ignore completely.

She had thought Jon Snow an honourable fool like Eddard Stark had been, but then she had received the boy’s raven — _The King in the North is on his way to fetch the Lady of Winterfell, and he expects to find her alive, if Queen Cersei means to keep her own head_ — and she thinks that the Stark bastard might indeed be more of a trueborn Targaryen than she would have given him credit for before.

“You and I never were all that different, were we, little dove?” Cersei says one evening. Sansa does not look at her, but no matter; she will have to listen nonetheless. “But let me give you some advice. You’d best tread carefully. I thought my own brother would always come for me, but he left just as quickly. Just as easily. Jon Snow may not be your brother after all, but he is a man still, and men are fickle creatures. You should know that by now.”

The wind whips outside, bringing the chill of an encroaching winter with it.

“Jon is Jon,” Sansa remarks at length. She offers nary a glance, only her faith in the man she doesn’t even know was on his way to her, for Cersei had not told her. “He may not be my brother, but I trust him.”

“As foolish as ever, little dove,” Cersei sighs, although she knows the girl speaks only the truth. Jon Snow is on his way to her, and Cersei Lannister would hold the North soon enough, so long as she produced the country’s key in exchange.

 _Winter is coming…_ And what good is a key, if it’s not used to unlock all the doors that had been barred to the holder before?

 

* * *

 

 **iv. it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you**  
**there’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do**

Jon takes the road to the capital hard and fast and relentlessly. He does not stop to eat or rest or think; he is a man possessed, and only urges his steed onwards, ever onwards.

If he stops, his tumultuous thoughts will catch up to him. If he allows the fear to settle, it will spread, conjuring images from his worst nightmares that would make him weak, a shell of a man — _Sansa_ , broken and bleeding; Sansa, glassy-eyed and short of breath; heart slowing to a stuttered, fading beat; face drained of color; curtain of hair, once vibrant and like silk to touch, turned dry and brittle…

 _Sansa_ , gone so far that he could not get her back, no matter how hard he pushed his steed, no matter how he prayed to gods he hardly believed in anymore…

Sansa, wrenched from his grasp before he could even bind her to him, to keep her safe, to keep her _home_.

He cannot think on it, cannot entertain the pain — only the pure, unadulterated rage that threatens to burn him from the inside-out: the rage that someone would take her from him, that he had been unable to stop it, that he had not killed the thief in the night… _I should have been there._

But he is only here now.

So he rides with reckless abandon and swears to the heavens that — should he find her safe and whole — he will not hesitate to never let her go again.

_Whatever I have to do, whatever I must give in exchange, take it — take whatever it is, whatever you want, so long as I get her in return for it._

Jon does not know with whom he bargains, nor does he pretend that it matters. For he would give anything, to _anyone_ , if only it meant that he would bring Sansa home with him.

He does not know how many days have passed since his departure when he rides through the gates to King’s Landing. The sun hangs low in the sky, and the horizon is bright gold as evening approaches. The frantic _clop-clop-clop_ of his horse’s hooves upon the stone streets continues as the Red Keep looms ahead, as its silhouette grows larger with every snap of the reins in Jon’s rough-hewn hands.

Hands that itch to draw his sword, hands that itch to bruise and break…

_Hands that would beg to hold her close._

Cersei Lannister awaits his arrival, standing cold and regal upon the keep’s balcony. Her face is a mask of impassivity, but the setting sun catches a gleam in her eyes that Jon does not like, but he alights his horse and makes his way up the stone steps all the same. He is flanked by guards that he sorely wishes to cut down, as their company only impedes his ascent — only prolongs his reunion with Sansa.

“So you’ve come to bend the knee?” Cersei greets him when they find themselves on level ground.

The heat would be stifling, if Jon weren’t already suffocated by this mad, overpowering fear — _where is she?_

But Cersei offers him nothing but the smallest of smirks. “What does your Dragon Queen think of that?”

Jon is in no mood for the woman’s taunts. “I’ve come for Sansa.”

“And you shall have her,” she acquiesces, but adds too quickly to promote any true good will — “When you bend the knee.”

 _Bend the knee bend the knee bend the knee…_ Jon bristles. It’s all these self-proclaimed queens want — complete subordinance, while they do not lift a hand to earn the loyalty they demand. No, they _only_ _demand_ and set their refusers aflame, and yet they promise to build a better world when all they do is burn it down. Jon has had enough of these false Southron queens; he has come for the only queen the North knows, and he does not mean to leave this polluted, hellish wasteland without her.

Cersei is just as impatient with Jon Snow’s stony silence as he is with her finely-woven games. “I’m not a difficult woman,” she says when it’s clear that Jon does not intend to speak. “Far from unreasonable. I only ask for this one thing — the North’s support of my claim. Pledge your kingdom to me, and I will return your lovely Northern flower to you.”

“I want to see her,” Jon insists. _The only thing I want._ “Show me that Sansa is alive and well, and you will have the North’s allegiance.”

_And if she is not, then I shall put your head on a spike._

Cersei considers the request. “And what of your alliance with the Targaryen girl?”

“Severed upon my departure.” Jon can only hope that her advisors have placated her well enough, regardless of the way he’d chosen to leave things. But Daenerys’ bruised ego is the least of his concerns at present.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, Jon Snow.” Cersei sneers. “How did she take it? That you would choose Sansa Stark over her?”

_I will always choose Sansa. I promised her, long before the rest of you demanded oaths from me._

The words are on the tip of his tongue, but Jon does not allow them to escape. He does not wish to make Cersei Lannister privy to his weakness beyond a shadow of a doubt.

And yet, she seems to know it just as well. It’s in the storm in his eyes, the clench of his fists at his sides, in the bunched muscles of his shoulders. Every part of him shouts it from the balcony of the Red Keep, it hangs in the smoggy air, and it rolls with the waves that crash upon the shore:

_I want her back I want her back I want her back —_

Cersei smiles, a frigid twitch of her lips that sets that gleam in her eyes further aglow. “A fascinating development,” she comments, as though it really does fascinate her.

But there are more important matters to attend to, so Cersei prods the boy — just as much an honourable fool as Eddard Stark, and just as recklessly in love as the father who had never publicly claimed him — “And your own right to Westeros? What of that?”

“Refused,” Jon says at once, and Cersei has no reason to doubt his assurance.

Flighty and foolish as Rhaegar Targaryen had proven himself to be, Eddard Stark had raised this boy as his own, and Cersei has learned that the Northmen value their honour — their family — more than their solemn oaths to whichever monarch rules over them.

Vows are easily broken; blood is not. So long as the Lannister threat remains, the Starks will comply — and their compliance is all that Cersei requires of them.

So when Jon Snow takes a knee and pledges his sword to Cersei’s cause and claim, she is satisfied that the safe return of his beloved Lady Sansa will be enough to keep him true to his word.

“Very well, then.” Cersei bids him stand, and to follow her into the castle. “Let us see to your lady love, then, Jon Snow.”

 

* * *

 

 **v. the wild dogs cry out in the night**  
**as they grow restless, longing for some solitary company**

The key scrapes in the lock, and Sansa turns from the window in time with the _creak-creak-creeeeak_ of the opening door.

She does not have proper time to register her visitors, though, when one of them has crossed the room to her in half a heartbeat’s time: The hurried scuff of boots across the flagged stone floor; the _swish!_ of a cloak as it falls from broad shoulders in such haste; the feel of strong, familiar arms around her, hauling her close to a solid chest and the hammer of a panicked heart against her own —

 _“Jon,”_ she nearly sobs his name in a rushed whisper, when his rough, bearded cheek nuzzles behind her ear.

She clings to him, inhaling his wintry scent — leather and pine, woodsmoke and sweat. And when she twists her fingers into the loose curls at the nape of his neck, he breathes _“Sansa”_ into her skin, and she feels hot tears dampen her hair.

“You came,” she says, voice still hushed and dazed. “You came for me.”

_I knew you would._

“Of course —” a husky murmur and more tears as he buries his face into her neck, her hair, reveling in how alive she is — how sweet and _real_ , and how she folds into his arms like the gods had fashioned them for one another.

Jon pulls back so that he might look his fill of her. He blinks the tears back, fighting them just so he can look at her, and he finds that her eyes are swimming, too. The candlelight in the room paints her in bright, luminous colour — cerulean eyes, vermillion hair, a blush like roses blooming in her weirwood-bark skin…

His hands move to cradle her face and he tells her, “Of course I came for you.”

There’s an earnestness in his gaze, in the low Northern rumble of his voice, that makes a tingle shoot up Sansa’s spine, a current of energy that sparks a thousand more when his thumbs sweep the curve of her cheekbones and his eyes — those dark, dark eyes that she can read like a book by now, if only she weren’t so afraid of what she might find — fall to trace the shape of her lips.

Her breath hitches in her chest, and stays trapped there when the _swish_ of Cersei’s gown slithers across the floor towards them.

“She’s a pretty thing, your cousin is, Jon Snow,” the queen remarks. One jeweled hand strokes the ends of Sansa’s hair and Jon’s eyes flash in a warning that goes unacknowledged. “You must have noticed. You _do_ notice, I can see it in your eyes…”

Cersei smiles, the gesture no more genuine than any of the others, as her fingers continue their caress through Sansa’s hair. “Jaime used to look at me that way.”

Her words fall on deaf ears and Jon growls, low and dangerous, “Don’t touch her.”

There’s something within him — a cursed, primal something that claws at his insides, aching to be released, to rip apart the hands of anyone who might presume to touch Sansa and make her shiver so, as if the winter winds were slicing into her skin like the sharpened edge of a blade —

_Don’t touch her. She’s mine._

“Of course not.” Cersei drops her hand. “I’ll leave that to you, Jon Snow.”

A thick, potent silence follows that statement, so that neither Jon nor Sansa could be left to doubt her meaning. It makes no difference to Cersei how they choose to take it, or what they do with it once she’s left them to each other for the night.

She has what she wants from the Starks; they are free to do as they please with one another now.

“You’d best rest. You have a long journey ahead of you. I’ll prepare my forces to accompany you.” Cersei glances over her shoulder with a pointed look at the pair of them. The candlelight skips over the jewels adorning her hand as it settles on the door. “And to ensure that you uphold your end of this bargain.”

And with that, the door snaps shut, and the scrape of the key is heard once more. The sound echoes as the door is locked, leaving Jon and Sansa mercifully — the only mercy the gods had seen fit to bestow upon them — alone.

 

* * *

 

**vi. hoping to find some long-forgotten words or ancient melodies**

The evening air dances through the open windows, making the flames in their candelabras — simple and intricate alike — flicker and shudder, but the firelight does not die, and the candles continue to drip wax into their brushed bronze holders.

Jon appears mesmerized by the movements. At least, he refuses to meet Sansa’s eye now, once the door’s been locked and they’re alone, when it’s safe for her to ask him —

“You bent the knee.”

But it’s not a question.

“To get you back?” He scrubs a hand over his beard. “Aye. I did.”

He says it as if no other conclusion had crossed his mind. Sansa’s heart tightens in her chest, but she cannot allow herself to indulge in such romanticisms. She had prayed, for the first time in so long, that he would come for her — because she had _known_  that he would — but she had not anticipated what he would agree to, just to see her safely home.

Perhaps she should have known — there were so few options available to them, truly — and yet…

“And what happens when the war is through?” she asks of him, her tone teetering into incredulity in a bid to bury her unease over what’s to come. “The North will have two queens that will rip it apart?”

Jon snorts, and the flame winks. “The North will have _one_ queen. The others won’t survive the war.”

He meets her eye then, to make sure that his meaning is plain. No matter which queen he had pledged the North’s forces to, the implication of his words is nothing short of treasonous. Jon knows this, most assuredly; he will have to mind his tongue in the days, weeks (he prays not _months_ ) to come. But for now, when they are alone, Jon will not have Sansa believe that he means to crown any queen but her when this is all over.

_We need to trust each other._

Sansa, though, ever pragmatic even in the face of so much uncertainty, lightly admonishes him with nothing more than a look and utterance of his name: “Jon.”

That’s all it is, nothing more, and yet Jon’s temper flares. He’s exhausted, spent, from riding day and night to get to her, from riding high on emotions he could not bear to name — fear and dread and hopelessness that he would find her as he has: alive and unscathed. She is a miracle, one that he had never been so foolish as to pray for — and yet here she stands, the answer to everything he’s ever wanted but knew he could never have.

But now… _Now_ , he could have her if she wants him to.

Yet, alone as they are in these chambers with the sickeningly sweet Southron breeze surrounding them, there is still so much that stands between them.

And Jon doesn’t give a damn about any of it.

_Only her. Only ever her._

“Neither of them care about the White Walkers, Sansa,” he bites out at last. “Daenerys is liable to destroy herself — and if she doesn’t…”

_Then I’ll have to do it myself._

Jon runs agitated hands through his hair, down his face. He knows it like he’s hardly ever known anything before, and he lays it all at Sansa’s feet now.

“Once the Night King’s been vanquished and his army with it, the war won’t be done.” His gaze locks onto hers, and he knows she sees it— had perhaps seen it all along. “You know it as well as I do. The news of my parentage did not please her, and you very well know that, too. I don’t want the throne, but —”

_With respect, Your Grace, I don’t need your permission. I am a king._

“She won’t believe you,” Sansa finishes for him, as Jon drowns himself in things he shouldn’t have said. But his restless temper had gotten the best of him and he’d said them, anyway. “She’d rather extinguish a threat than live in fear of it.”

Jon nods. “And now, coming here, well, I haven’t exactly proven myself loyal to her, have I? I thought to play the part a little while longer, but…”

_But then you were taken in the middle of the night, snatched away, and I couldn't pretend anymore that my heart was anyone’s but yours._

His gaze drops, tracing the curves of Sansa’s face and the dips of her shoulders, as though he means to commit the shape of her to memory. “Things change.”

Sansa wonders if she could melt from his eyes alone, wonders if she would break if he touched her now — she _wonders_ to the point of an all-consuming near-madness; she’s on fire, shattering, whilst he’s several steps away from her still and the distance feels like a gaping chasm.

“They didn’t have to,” she presses, grasping for reason, if only to tether herself to the here and now.

All over again, Jon’s temper piques — _snaps_. For all her cleverness, all her cheek, and still Sansa doesn’t see what his clinging, lingering gazes have been positively  _screaming_ at her for longer than he cared to admit — longer than was proper, long before they knew he could look at her like he did without shame.

“I thought you were dead, Sansa,” he tells her now, because — _thank the gods_ — she’s alive, and he’ll keep her that way by keeping her with him. “Do you know what that was like — to think that I’d had you, safe at Winterfell, and then you were snatched away in the middle of the night and I thought I’d never see you again?”

He closes the space between them in just a few quick strides, just as he had when he’d been led to her chambers, when he’d wrapped her up in an embrace he never wanted to relinquish.

“Do you know what that was like,” he asks again, as he takes her face in his hands, “to think I’d lost you? That I’d never speak to you, see you smile…” His breath shudders as he trails off, but his voice is steady when he continues, holding her all the while, “That I’d never touch you? Ever again? Ever, the way I’ve wanted to?” He catches a tear she hadn’t intended to fall on his thumb and wipes it away. “The way I thought I never could?”

If one good thing had come of Jon’s true parentage — just one, single good thing amidst all the rot — it was that finally, Jon could have all those things he’d spent so long denying himself because he’d felt unworthy of them:

_A purpose, a name, a home… A love with whom to share it all, a lady wife, children of our own…_

No longer a bastard but a prince, he could have all of it. And Sansa… everything she’d wanted in her youthful dreams, he could give that to her, too. He _wants_ to give it to her.

He wants _her_.

“Jon…” His name is not an admonishment now, but a question — a hope verging on a prayer that he means to answer.

“It drove me mad, Sansa.” He shakes his head as his hands move to card through her long, silken locks of hair. “How much I wanted you. How often I had to tell myself you were my sister, and that I _couldn’t_. I’d wanted to be a Stark all my life — it was all I’d ever wanted, to be acknowledged as Eddard Stark’s trueborn son. But then…”

It hurts to breathe, but then Sansa’s hands are on him — sliding up his chest to his worn and ragged heart, and he trembles at her touch. He clings to that feeling, to the way she twists him ‘round her little finger, and lets the words he’d locked away for so long find their freedom.

“Then there was _you_ , and being Eddard Stark’s son was the last thing I wanted. Because if I didn’t have his name, or his blood, then that meant I could have you. And I wanted you more than anything, and I hated myself for it. But now…” Jon’s hands keep up their monistrarions through her hair, and Sansa’s eyes glisten in the shivering candlelight all around them. “Now, I don’t have to. Now I can want you — and I _do_ , gods, Sansa, I want you so much I can’t breathe —”

His mouth is on hers before the words can spill into the space between their lips; there is no space left to be had, when Jon catches the taste of Sansa’s small, surprised but eager gasp. His hands slip from her curtain of hair to span her back, to wrap his arms ‘round her waist and pull her to him, as he licks along the seam of her lips and coaxes them apart with his own.

 _“Sansa,”_ he murmurs into her mouth, and takes the kiss deeper.

His eyes are squeezed shut tight in ecstasy, and hers to stem the flow of tears that find their way down her cheeks, anyway. Jon can taste the salt of them on her lips, and in the way her breath heaves and shakes.

“I want you so much,” he mutters against the corner of her mouth, as his hands drop to her hips to soothe her cries away. “So much, Sansa, I love you so much —”

“I love you, too,” she reveals in a rush of gasps and tears and one short hiccup of a laugh, as if he’s just relieved her of the world sitting upon her shoulders. “I love you, Jon, I don’t want to pretend anymore —”

“We don’t have to,” he swears to her. He noses at her jaw so that she’ll tilt it upwards and he can kiss her neck. “We don’t have to pretend, Sansa, darling girl, you can be mine just as I’ve been yours, I promise I’ve always been yours…”

There is little need for more words between them, little need for anything else but his hands on her hips and her fingers in his hair. Jon pulls her closer, so much closer, and Sansa follows his steps, just as eager to melt against him as he is to pull her into his very heart, into his bones.

They will return to Winterfell on the morrow — to one war stacked on top of another, and to the bleak uncertainty that accompanies it. But tonight…

Tonight, Jon leads Sansa to the bed, and they fall atop the goose-feather duvets in a tangle of kisses and limbs and whispered promises meant to be kept. They will have tonight, and perhaps it will be enough to give them something else to fight for in the wars to come.

Jon wants to promise her the future, and Sansa wants to give it to him. Tonight, that’s all that matters, all that exists — something more than the wars that loom ahead; something like the springtime sunshine cutting through the clouds above.

“Marry me,” he husks into her ear, amidst their roaming hands and mouths, amidst their seeking hips and intertwining fingers and staggered heartbeats. “When this is all over… Sansa…” He plucks kisses up her throat as he chases her lips once more. “Be my wife.”

 _“Yes,”_ she sighs like she means it, and Jon knows that she does. Sansa has never said a word to him that she hasn’t meant before. “Yes, I’ll marry you — no matter what, Jon, I’ll be yours.”

_When the snows fall and the white winds blow…_

“Just as I am yours,” Jon vows, and it’s an oath he will not break for the sake of any other queen.

_The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._

 

* * *

 

 **vii. [epilogue:]**  
**gonna take some time to do the things we never had**

The war ends as the Targaryens foretold (however unknowingly): In fire and blood — and with no one left who would uphold those words into the spring that blooms once the last of the ice recedes.

When Jon and Sansa wed beneath the heart tree, he does not cloak her in any colours, but he vows his protection all the same. He has never given her reason to doubt the oaths he’s sworn to her in the past, and these sacred words are no different than all the ones that came before. She trusts him with her life, with her heart, and with the spring that flourishes around them.

Bran presides over the ceremony, and Arya gives her away.

“What would our lady mother say?” Arya wonders as the sisters take the winding path through the godswood.

“If she had known the truth?” Sansa smiles — small and sweet and rather sad. “I should like to think she’d understand, at least. We’ve lost so much, Arya. And Jon… he wants to give it all back to me — everything that he can.”

Arya tilts her head and says, matter-of-fact, “You love him.”

Sansa’s smile comes more easily this time, wider and true. “I do.”

“Well I suppose you’d best marry him, then.”

It’s the closest Arya’s come to a joke in so many moons, and Sansa laughs with a freedom, a relief, that she has not felt in so many more.

At the end of the dusty, dead leaf-strewn path, Jon catches her eye mid-laugh. His answering smile is brighter than any dragon’s flame, and promises not to destroy, but to rebuild: their country, their home, their legacy. It’s the smile he’d given her near-on a lifetime ago, when they sat together at Castle Black and she’d choked on bitter ale, but nothing had been sweeter than the sight of his smile and the sound of her laugh.

And now, when she slips her hand into his proffered one at the end of the path, at the base of the heart tree, Sansa thinks that whatever Jon will bring her in their life to come will be even sweeter still.

Jon lifts her hand to his lips, and sweeps feather-light kisses across her knuckles. His eyes sparkle in the springtime sun, and he murmurs into her skin, _my brave, beautiful girl_.

With her free hand, Sansa traces a fingertip along the scar across his brow, and she asks him if he’ll dance with her tonight.

“Oh, he will,” Bran answers for him. When his family tuns their attention towards him, the boy’s smile is soft and secret, for still he seems to hold all the mysteries of Westeros in the palm of his hand.

Now he lifts those hands to his sister and their cousin, to all present company that had gathered to witness the nuptials that would spawn a new age, and Bran’s voice — steady and deep — rings out through the spring air that dances between the weirwood trees:

“Shall we begin?”


End file.
